Old Roads: Paths Though Memory.

 

Some films are favorites. Others become places we return to. For me, one of those places is the 1977 animated The Hobbit.

My life has spanned too many decades now. I have books, movies, shows, and music from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s that can instantly transport me back to a different place and time. My earliest memory of a movie that can take me back in time was the 1977 animated The Hobbit by Rankin and Bass. I rewatch this movie at least ten times every year. It is a huge part of my childhood. It is a good film, yes, but that isn't why I keep returning to it. That movie introduced me to the fact that movies could be (and often are) made from books, often good books. It introduced me to J. R. R. Tolkien, who has become a lifelong favorite author of mine, even though he had passed away before I even knew he existed. Watching this movie takes me right back to the winter of '77, sitting in front of the television, watching it unfold, amazed by everything I saw. 

I know there has been a lot of criticism of this version, some of it well deserved, though I would still rather watch it than the twelve-hour adaptation that came later. At nine years of age, though, it was a wonder. 

Every time I hear the opening music and see the animated book fade in and Gandalf's opening line "In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit. Many ages ago when this ancient planet wasn't quite so ancient…" I am right there. I am in my living room, on my knees in my pajamas (back when pajamas were still a thing) in front of the console television (if you are too young to remember the console TV, you have my sympathy). In fact, the memory is so clear that when I watch it, I can remember that they were Star Wars pajamas. It's one of the few early childhood memories I have, but when that opening plays it's like being there again. 

The Hobbit was not the only eye-opening experience I had in '77. It was also the year I saw Star Wars. Undeniably Star Wars was a much bigger influence on me than was The Hobbit. But while I can remember seeing it in '77, through all of '77, and all of '78 too, and in fact remember being in a theater 118 times, in two different states, over the two and a half years it was in theaters, Star Wars doesn't evoke the same kind of time-travel memories.

I have loved that movie ever since. But for the life of me, I cannot remember, at all, any of those showings with the exception of the one time I saw it in Florida while my family was on vacation there. I don't even remember that showing in any detail, though. Just that it happened. This is what makes Star Wars a favorite (maybe my all-time favorite), but not a place I return to. 

I watch it probably as many times as The Hobbit over the course of a year, but only because I enjoy the movie, not because it holds one of those special memory-inducing places in my soul. 

  Till next time,

        John